Transcripts For ALJAZ Invisible Threat 20240713

India 414 does seem really low for a country with a population of 1300000000 people india has also performed the lowest number of tests among affected countries Something Like 3 per 1000000 that was a was about 90 a day and there are increasing concerns of the very low level of testing could be hiding the real number of cases and so indians a bracing themselves as the government has now expanded testing criteria and doubled the number of Testing Centers brought in the private sector private hospitals so there was Something Like 52 Testing Center the government Testing Centers and not all of them were operational its double that people are really bracing themselves to see what the real number of cases are and there has been an exponential rise just on saturday and sunday both days saw saw the biggest jump so again you know unprecedented times here like like many other places in the world but for now most indians do understand the need for the for the lock down for the number of dead has risen by hundreds in spain with 462. 00 deaths on monday this takes the total number of deaths there to over 2000 spain is the worst affected european country after italy with more than 30000 cases on sunday the Prime Minister extended the state of emergency for another 15 days while hong kongs chief executive has imposed new restrictions as the city reports an increase in the number of imported infections there all nonresidents have now been banned from entering the city. From wednesday on words we will this allow hong kong residents coming from overseas countries arriving at the Hong Kong International airport saw enter hong kong so you have to understand we have a different regimes and in the last 2 months in leading this fight against the virus i have time and again emphasized we are basing decisions on science on the facts and figures on evidence and also have the expert advice of the 4 professors on the expert advice re panel the politics of pressure are not something that come into the formula now the International Olympic Committee Says its considering postponing the 2020 tokyo games by up to a year its been under mounting pressure from athletes and National Bodies to cancel or to delay the event japanese Prime Minister shinzo are best says he does not believe the games can be held under the current circumstances of course i said no uma while the International Community is being severely affected in a negative way we hope to hold the games to mark that the world has defeated the coronavirus i thought that cancelling them is not an option at all and the decision that will be made by the committee is in line with what i just said but if that becomes difficult we will think of the athletes 1st and foremost and we may have no option but to consider postponing Singapore Airlines is the latest airline to cut back its operations taking 96 percent of its planes out of commission and follows decisions by emirates and Turkish Airlines which decided to hold nearly all their passenger flights. And in other news u. S. Secretary of state mike compare has landed in afghanistan on an unannounced visit to help salvage a deal between washington and the taliban it comes as the 1st direct talks between the Afghan Government and the taliban have taken place on exchanging prisoners last month the armed groups signed a deal with the u. S. And cats are aimed at ending the 18 year conflict well those are the headlines the news continues here manmade invisible threat stay with us. The. Its bad enough to catch a disease naturally but to take a disease and turn it into a weapon to enhance the disease to make it more virulent or more contagious or resistant to known vaccines thats particularly there again just kind of goes off the charts there its turning Mother Nature against us. Weapons that destroyed by spreading deadly diseases have a long in unhappy history billions of dollars have been spent by governments to create pathogens that can cause fatal illnesses even today some countries are stockpiling just such a deadly arsenal in a widely reported News Conference syria has admitted as much. A perhaps more dangerous than the age of rapidly advanced technology its quite possible for individuals or groups to create biological mayhem. 12 countries that are battling an outbreak of a nasty strain of e. Coli i have a strain say of all the consequences of this would be longer just not a libya harm see image i know alison intrigues you on the truth in front of the clearly not Mission Critical 16 people have already died identify the source of this because like contamination has become ever more urgent some have even suggested that this super super resistant strain recall i could have been engineered in a lab. The World Health Organization calls the deliberate contamination of our food one of the major biological threats of the 21st century. In the modern globalized economy where food gets transported all over the world there are a lot of opportunities for somebody to contaminate food with with biological agents. And i dont want to go into much detail but there was a an article that was published in the proceedings of the National Academy of sciences about. Some touching Dairy Products milk using bunch montauk so now you can cause horrible damage with death many thousands of coffee. Cold jackson is a Senior Scientist at one of the United States most important biological laboratories. That is kind of frightening when you think over the last 2 different passes will somebody thats a likely or a Large Population or a small part of the population what goes with food there are cases in the are not so this will pass for people about that. Oregon authorities announced that the most serioUs Biological attack in u. S. History was carried out not by Foreign Terrorists but by the followers of a homegrown religious cult. Salad bars and 10 oclock restaurants were deliberately contaminated with salmonella. 751 people were poisoned and 45 hospitalized at disciples of korea right knew she sought to incapacitate voters and see their own candidates win the 1984 Washoe County election. The sun the incident occurred in the United States the biological attacks could happen anywhere in the world and so father has not been a coordinated global plan about how to deal with this. I know. 6 the word terrorism evokes images of airplanes smashing into Office Towers of bombs blowing up in markets these remain real threats so do attacks by chemicals mustard gas defoliants on nerve agents. But there is something even more insidioUs Biological weapon so. Thats the whole point of terrorism is this to put enormous psychological pressure on the audience to try to reach for talking about biological agents i mean unseen in many cases that you can smell them for that very reason those kinds of weapons have a much more powerful psychological impact on target audiences. Even going 5 people with a bio as you would would be more scary than killing 200. 00 people with a commercial explosive its been no confirmed. This is a band practice in britain but its been a day of false alarms the sorting office in liverpool is closed down and workers were forced to leave the Stock Exchange in london for a short time today Police Say People should stay calm but vigilant the latest victims in florida the scene of the 1st outbreak of anthrax 5 new cases reported by the American Media company overnight on the basis of blood tests carried out on every employee the fact that this seems to be spreading 10 days after the 1st victim died confirmation of americas worst fears never mind the source then the point is the kind of on capitol hill today you could hear it loud and clear threats from biological and chemical agents are real. Following the 911. 00 attack and the 2001 anthrax murders the United States government poured billions of dollars into Homeland Security experts from around the world were tractor to well funded Scientific Laboratory is and think tanks high on their list of threats to be investigated with the use of deadly pathogens as weapons a long and ugly stain on the history of mankind oh my gosh warfare 1st reared its head when man started fighting man you know whether it was putting scorpions in a clay pot and tossing him at your enemy or taking bodies people who had died from the plague and tossing them over city walls in Medieval Times poisoning Water Supplies these are all ancient techniques and biological warfare but it was only during the major wars of the last century where science started just to conduct this time. The real danger of the real threat was the beginning of the 20th century youre moving into bombs airplanes and the. Really and so microbiology. Doing the sino japanese war the japanese government engaged in a massive biological Weapons Program between 19401943 japan dropped hundreds of bombs infected with deadly germs on the levantine 60 s. As many as 200000 chinese citizens harish. They did initially the attacks on northern cities with plague and people did die and then later in the early part of the 1940 s. There were more aggressive attacks where they used anthrax planters cholera and other diseases. Martin for months is a United States pathologist with an interest in medical history in 1998 a colleague sent him a package containing autopsies performed on chinese victims years before i opened it up and they were page after page of these people murdered by biological weapons. It was the 1st time and one of the few times when i was looking at it. I could feel powerful evil and there were. Docked with them and discovered that some of the victims of japanese bombing had survived in 2000 to travel to their villages theyre called rot making villages for the simple reason that people who were there in the summer of 1942 got rotten eggs when you interview these people you. Of a very similar story a lot of people started getting boils on their bodies throbbing thing it burst minute it uses pus and blood and continues to be horribly painful and essentially never heal eventually docked at the moment ski concluded that the villages was suffering from glendas a disease that attacks horses and which for decades had been all but eliminated. The japanese had dropped bombs laden with this pathogen they spread cholera the spread of typhoid fever is produced in theory they spread glanders the spread anthrax and they spread plague. Essentially doing a biological scorched earth. Perhaps even more horrific than the dropping of germ bombs where the experiments carried out by unit 731. In manchuria. Japanese sent out their secret police and rounded up troublemakers and they would end up at unit 731. 00 as human guinea pigs and they would inoculate them with diseases to see how long they would die and they would tie them to stakes and drop bombs out of airplanes to see how well the bombs spread the disease. Theres always an aspect when youre dealing with biological weapons or chemical weapons some extent of extermination the way you would exterminate germany. After the end of the war japanese scientists who worked at unit 731 were granted amnesty by the United States in exchange for information on the biological Weapons Program the japanese who did bad science and killed thousands of people doing it got off scot free and they ended up going back to the universities and became chairman of departments and became captains of industry and and. On happy lives. Successive japanese governments have been extremely reluctant to take responsibility for atrocities committed during world war 2. All the major powers have dabbled in the germ warfare but british scientist peregrym work here in this Research Establishment they stored a male 50 kilograms of bacteriological agents enough to kill every living thing on. The british experimented with typhoid dysentery and cholera testing these pathogens on animals. If youre using a live agent test and this was done out in the ocean in many cases what you would do is tie animals on cages on deck and disperse the agent and see how well it would affect the animals and this was also done for example by the United Kingdom with sheep being tested with anthrax on growing out island. World war 2 did not bring an end to biological weapons the cold war heated up providing another excuse to produce this deadly arsenal. Britain france and canada for example embarked on a program that experimenting with many kinds of diseases. That awful it would be enough to. Be illegal dose and it was to kill Something Like 50000. 00 people this bottle on the other hand contains a biological agent simulates if that were friends of senator ensign which causes the disease to remain there could be enough in that vault to infect every man woman and child in the world. But it was the Us Biological Weapons Program that was the most dangerous 8 it was by far the largest and most ambitious 8 aggressor military leaders know of disadvantage chemical and biological agents cannot afford an early be detected by the human sensory or reactionary. The effect can be deadly to part of the state guard the experimenters dangerous organisms are confined to safety cabinets. Using rubber gloves which are sealed to the cabinets scientists can handle deadly cultures and still be safe from infection. With the cold war the United States begins a biological Weapons Program which is twinned with the Nuclear Program i thought unicity of any potential danger is another important criteria. Of course youre familiar with the pathogenicity of the 2 linus talks of a suspension of which is were being tested by intraperitoneal injection of mike. Many kinds of animals were used in us experiments mice rats rabbits guinea pigs and most especially monkeys the restraining boxes used to hold the monkey in position to receive the measured air assault. Be on a horse and pass through a series of air locks and positioned in a sealed exposure chamber commensurate using monkeys got all the monkeys you want but you still dont know at the end of the day whether to make a human sick how much will make a human sick how long the person will stay sick and so you need to have human subjects in order to proof test whether. We went through all kinds of room. Lights we change our clothes in the scrub then weve got on the elevator and went up to a catwalk in each port hole they had a black a telephone booth and thats when you went in to then theyd close the door and thats when we were hooked up to the tube. You can smell it taste it. If you 2nd so poor. Ken jones was inhaling q. Fever a bacterial infection which can result in hepatitis and pneumonia. He is a religious pacifist one of a 2000 Conscientious Objectors who volunteered for operation white coat. You want to end for kiki where some 600. 00 military and civilian scientists Work Together in research at the Army Biological Laboratories to protect this country against a biological attack that is a silent assault by an invisible cloud that carries disease organism. There was testing on humans often done in a facility at fort dietrich known as the 8 ball which was in l. A. Sion chamber where they could disperse aerosols and see you know how much it takes to infect a human but they were given immediate medical treatment into the best of my knowledge there were no fatalities. By code volunteers claim that the Us Government assured them that all testing would be for defensive purposes only this is the make of the vaccine to protect you. And make it a hazmat suit to protect you a gas mask to protect you. Lot of hospital procedure come from this operation. What was happening at fort dietrich was not only a defensive program but also an offensive program so. It was research that could be used for either purpose. Here was here controversy about the White Coat Program there was a lot of heat about the biological Weapons Program there were ethical worries that is it do we really want to start a disease that might sweep the country. We just got rid of. Any. Biological weapons that. President nixon had decided that given the success of hiroshima and nagasaki in ending world war 2 Nuclear Weapons with a supreme deterrent the Us Biological alsono was deemed unnecessary in 969 the United States halted offensive biological research and eventually destroyed all stockpiles the idea was that the nation state the us as a nation state didnt need it it had the clear weapons with which we could destroy large numbers of people quite nicely thank you. And that you know that possessing these things would just encourage other people to go the white hole number on april 10th 972 a place from the time of real significance for the future of the world and the people in it in 1972103 nations including the United States and the soviet union approved a Convention Prohibiting the production of biological weapons. The treaty to which these nations have committed. Bind them to stop making biological weapons and to destroy all existing stocks of those most of gusting means of mass slaughter the good thing about the biological Weapons Convention is a stablish the norm yet established and or against. Other people would do what other states would do and at least not that long. But critics felt the convention was all but useless it had no team it still has no inspection provisions in large part because even before any country put in on paper signing that treaty there was the prevailing concept that it was impossible it was unverifiable this servia cheering in actually used the convention to embark on the largest and most destructive biological Weapons Program in the history of the world and soviet signing. The biological Weapons Convention while at the same time embarking on a huge ramp up of their biological Weapons Program. There are no words to describe just how heinous that type of a government policy is. To syria q new or old is believed that there was not rules behind these conventions and they believed the divas to. Use the convention. And to develop biological weapons secretly in spite of the commish. If they believed exactly the see. So the 2 could teach of the convention 22. 00 summers. In a senior soviet scientist and an army colonel worked at version and in the our old sea it was here year after year that the soviet union tested weapons loaded with the most deadly diseases imaginable the Political Year is full of the recipients of the stuff. We should be able to get in really we were able to give. Police a resolution to this reward to there is still a war. But there were serious be real to the case that year was go home with a 1000000000. Dollars it is terrible to hear google is over with this. Sport as the rest of us are but really this ball is it really is a war should you be. A Russian Chemical Weapons Center a chick county on the river its suspected that chemical and biological weapons are still being developed at sites like this so western satellites have been watching for years. The soviet biological Weapons Program was roughly the same size as the nuclear Weapons Program and it was ultra secret very deeper than. So were talking about roughly 50 facilities and upwards of 50000 scientists and technicians thats a lot of technical talent could or the development of these types of weapons begins to plants against animals and against people. And i think many of us were very surprised at the enormity of the soviet enterprise because i think until the end of the cold war we really didnt understand how big it was and they said this is all for saloon purposes were going to make vaccines organisms for Pesticide Use and so on and thats what there is what the called the legend system that the real purpose and they become and by far the biggest biological Warfare Program that the world has ever seen and probably the most sophisticated. Is the rose here to report on the people often ignored but who must be hurt how many other channels can you say will take their time and put extensive thought into reporting from under reported areas of course we cover major global offense but our passion lies in making sure that youre hearing the stories from people in places like dallas via libya youngman the sahara legion and so many others to go to them you make the efforts we care we stay. So long of what do i owe the interest. But my sister saved me. A lot of my leg. You should with your family. The reality of addiction in the arab oils and the struggle of recovery. Its just me and its a truck. Of his era wells goes inside a rehab clinic in the nile delta. Rehab egypt edge of a diction on aljazeera. Joining the listening post as we turn the cameras on the media india has more than 424 Hour Television news channel morning talkers talk and focus on how they report on the stories that matter the most the states misleads to talk like this the media reflects the same thing. Climate change their editorial show its a very dark believe they have anything to apologize for their listening post on aljazeera there are some of the media stories a critical look at the global news media the spread of also on aljazeera government shut off access to social media. Hello again i missed all the attack and or how with the headlines on aljazeera india has extended a curfew across major cities to fight the spread of the coronavirus theres been a rise in the number of cases in the past few days a 1000000000 indians stayed home under a 14 hour lockdown on sunday while the number of dead has risen by hundreds in spain with 462 deaths on monday this takes the total number of deaths there to over 2000 spain is the worst affected european country off to italy with more than fetching 1000 cases on sunday the Prime Minister extended the state of emergency for another 15 days. While hong kongs chief executive has imposed new restrictions there as the city reports an increase in the number of imported infections all nonresidents have now been banned from entering the city from wednesday on words we will this allow hong kong residents coming from overseas countries arriving at the Hong Kong International airport saw and to hong kong so you have to understand we have a different regimes and in the last 2 months in leading this fight against the virus i have time and again emphasized we are basing decisions on science on facts and figures on evidence and also have the expert advice of the 4 professors on the expert advice re panel the politics of pressure are not something that come into the formula now the International Olympic Committee Says its considering postponing the 2020 tokyo games by up to a year its been under mounting pressure from athletes and National Bodies to cancel or delay the event japanese Prime Minister shinzo abbay says he does not believe the games can be held under the current circumstances and in other news u. S. Secretary of state mike pompei or has landed in afghanistan on an unannounced visit to help salvage a deal between washington and the taliban it comes as the 1st direct talks between the Afghan Government and the taliban have taken place on exchanging prisoners last month the armed groups signed a deal with the United States in cata ended ending the 18 year conflict. Well those are the headlines now its back to man made invisible threat to stay with us on aljazeera. Sagna ben. Is a professor at George Mason University and an expert on biological weapons she was born in tunisia and studied in france they had several people from teaching. To the western countries by antibiotics that were available at the time and these were used sent back to the former soviet union and it used to develop pathogens that would be resistance resistant to those antibiotics some of the diseases which the soviet scientists experimented with have long threatened mankind lithuanian born Raymond Zilinskas is a former microbiologist and a director at the Monterey Institute of International Studies nobody thought. Anybody would be so irresponsible as to be working with smallpox. So there was another contagious from it spreads from person to person and its very deadly in nature across and by 30 percent. But with a weapon i was probably Even Stronger and that maybe 50 percent or even higher for so there was horrible and then the circle one i was really awful was a place where the marburg virus against which there is no vaccine no treatment its about 80 percent. Of all. Ironically it was soviet citizens themselves residents of the Industrial City of faired lost who discovered how deadly their nations bio weapons were in 1979 anthrax was accidentally released into the air the wind blowing southward towards the city carried the pathogens 60 people died. For 16 years sergey pup of worked as a scientist in soviet lib oratory is creating some of the most destructive weapons ever conceived by mankind after the collapse of the soviet union he immigrated to the United States. There was no way around it because the system to engage people and did not let them go. There would be the record the k. G. B. Record. Wherever you go. The idea was to set up an Automated Research facility to synthesize different viruses so it was a clear attempt. To take advantage of new approaches. And genetic Engineering Design new varieties of information so. When these agents are used people who get infected develop the symptoms of one disease and when the physicians try to treat the start treating a person for that disease the treatment triggers the other agent which eventually kills. The person as horrific as this program was unlike in the United States the soviet scientists did not test the disease on human beings but they did use animals extensively. A typical experiment in that when the guinea pigs lose control of their body so they did not control the real him and that resulted in him but alice is in this. Experiments and mark is creative demonstrate. The weapons. For some of this there will be no protection it will become please collapse of the social life. Of the Society Overall of the Economic Life a devil opt aerosols a fat. Spread the bacteria or virus. The air make it airborne and therefore. Increase the number of people that get infected the effects of a contagioUs Biological attack could spread around the world literally within a matter of days. With the collapse of the soviet union in 1901 the new russian state simply couldnt afford to support a program that cost the country billions of dollars bio Weapons Research and production were shut down ultimately into it turned out to be a priest of effort and money complete 1st for our sake a power bar was 1. 00 of thousands of russian scientists who suddenly found themselves without a paycheck to obscure people who never established our careers you know in communication vis visit Academic Research just so it was very difficult to present ourselves you know as scientists and nobody would hire us. To know accomplishments in the biological weapon p. C. Which so it was a kind of thought trap so the crowd most of the thousands of scientists involved in the bio Weapons Program remained in russia and tried to adapt to the new society dr popof managed to immigrate currently a researcher in biotechnology at George Mason University. With the dismantling of the soviet program it was hoped that biological weapons would become obsolete this was not the case for years it had been secretly stockpiling a deadly arsenal weapons they had produced themselves they had developed to really serious systems one was based on bombs. That had 3 different kinds of words one worst time tracks the 2nd was was but one talks and then a certain one was something called aflatoxin. So those were ready to go they were loaded they had about 200. 00 of those 25. 00 scud missiles with the same kind of words and they were ready to. Well base sooner than on some of the things that were considered the classic agents in the major western soviet program like anthrax like clostridium but on but then they also did some unusual things why would one turn a disease that causes liver cancer. Into a weapon the results would have been shocking. The gulf or was over so quickly the iraqis did not have a chance to use their deadly arsenal the United States was pretty clear and articulating that Response Options would be considered. Used chemical or other weapons. And i think that caused some hesitation on his part after the gulf war ended it x. Bio Weapons Program remained hidden until in 1995 United Nations inspectors finally uncovered it the inspectors didnt want to get away with it if they had just thrown in the towel. It its very troublesome to think about how that would have changed the course of history in the middle east because iraq would have retained a super secret and potentially very potent category of weapons. It asks program illustrated vividly that it is conceivable that nations of all sizes could get their hands on bio weapons. Secretive countries such as north korea are suspects and syria has actually admitted to stockpiling weapons of mass destruction including biological i think there are some states out there that are still in this nasty business so if you really want to knock out weapon why not go for the one thats comparatively a lot cheaper easier to develop technologically and when theyre not looking for. A more way. Russia and the United States both in says that they are not presently engaged in the research or production of offensive biological weapons questions remain however i believe that the United States modus for the same is the United Kingdom but we have very Little Information about versions suit is still there for this zarif facility is russian and. Indeed in the biological. Research nobody have a different from those facilities but there was a lot of these. Believe you may in black books is. At present the concern is not so much about nation states using bio weapons as individuals especially those with scientific knowledge seth keris is a professor at the National Defense university in washington he has written extensively on bioterrorism and bio crimes but one of the the things that surprised me when i started digging into this subject was the number of people who used biological agents of one kind or another for criminal purposes its not uncommon today d to see people trying to get hold of toxins to users instruments of murder in a. 983 on finesse it no we didnt know and nursing home manager was convicted of killing 22 patients by injecting them with curious it a muscle relaxing drug used by the holmes medical staff in prison he admitted to murdering many more people in the mid 960 s. Mitsuru suzuki a japanese physician then bacteriologist handed out sponge cakes filled with salmon and dysentery bacteria to his colleagues he was eventually linked to an outbreak of typhoid fever and dysentery that sickened 200 people and killed 4. Even more dangerous than vengeful individuals or groups bent on destruction. For georgia man have been charged with conspiring to possess a destructive device one of the accused said there is no way for us a smallish a man to save this country the same georgia doing something highly illegal this wasnt just hong kong taken real steps toward iran carrying out their plans for the alleged plot involved explosions and a deadly biological toxin all this pressure there was like a little obvious have some other. Bioterrorism is a real concern there are certain groups that are motivated and some of those groups are motivated might have a capabilities at some point theres probably going to be some of it some point we are going to have bio terrorist could be potentially serious according to al jazeera and many other reliable news sources al qaeda had progressed much further towards developing biological weapons before 911. 00 then the world had realized while there has not been a biological attack by this group so far it remains a real concern u. S. Secretary of state Hillary Clinton in december 2011 warned that there is evidence that. Al qaeda in yemen is hard at work developing weapons of mass destruction in particular biological pathogens. Often called the brains behind a sama bin laden. Is now likely to assume the leadership of the diffuse organization that is al qaida film together by al jazeera in the mountains along the afghan pakistan border on less described as bin ladens closest mental this was in 20032 years after 911 the concern about all of. Us primarily from the fact that is its one of the few terrorist groups a. Has been interested in causing mass casualties and b. Has explicitly expressed interest that in fact us and try to put together a biological Weapons Program fact that so who is still there has the has to be concerned. Paradoxically the danger of bioterrorism has increased with the revolution in the sciences that are prolonging and enhanced single human life as cures for cancer and other diseases a found the number of trained people who could use their knowledge for nefarious purposes has also grown now the big change has been that biotechnology has spread throughout the world and that means that all the equipment and supplies related to civilian peacefully directed by technologies out there are all over the place. And that means that theoretically every buddy whos doing civilian biotechnology can do military but technology for a mentor does not know that its from mentoring bacillus thuringian cease to become a fire pesticide or bacillus anthraces to become the biological weapon of the biological weapons system and thats compound by the internet having become the worlds shopping center. The number of people who know how to use the tools of biology and could with conceivably do as has grown steadily so that millions of people are in that category now of thirst if i wanted to acquire a laboratory that would be potentially capable of producing. Some important quantities a biological agent i could buy that so not a whole lot of money in the end the reality is you could do that almost anywhere in the world that. Alqaeda was buying its equipment in pakistan and had no trouble clipping. Laboratory in afghanistan. You know the kinds of food from under the War Laboratory equipment that you would need and you can buy pretty much anywhere but there are producers of botulinum toxin you can buy that already and lasts. Most of those are in asia and for particular Mainland China on the internet they say well we can provide any quantities you need i mean thats something completely new that you can buy the most toxic substance in the world over the internet. And then the question is what about the what we call the known operators people now that are setting up molecular biology laboratories in their homes in their garages and resellers or whatever and theyre doing for the fun of how they going to be able to create a pathogen and one of them be crazy enough to want to do that yeah i would worry about that and. Maybe one of the most troublesome aspects of the life science revolution is that the information emerging is available to everyone no matter what their motivation you know most of the science that you need to create a biological weapon is obtainable through open scientific literature that needs to exist in order to improve the worlds health. Since the 1990 s. No respect i just got behind the idea that all the biological literature should be online so your University Undergraduate anywhere in europe has access to stuff behind pay walls their digital libraries and has access on an equal basis as a 16 year old kid from bangalore. Nothing illustrates the dial a number of readily Available Research more than the bird flu controversy in september 2011 a team of dutch and u. S. Scientists announced that they had engineered a strain of h 5 n one that could spread among mammals and possibly humans it caused a worldwide approach its a real life tale that reads like Science Fiction a dutch scientist using u. S. Government funding creates a deadly synthetic virus is still believed the bird flu physical model of an influenza virus of which bird flu is one inside our genes that change and its within this heart that mutations happen previously thought and he thought it would take many mutations to bed for it to become airborne now we know it only takes 5 in february 2012 the World Health Organization convened a meeting of experts who concluded that the h 5 n one research should not only continue but also be published a tsunami of controversy descended. In order to defend ourselves against the possibility. We need to do that kind of research but the question is still is it worth the risk and thats some people say you know the cost benefit on that the costs are too high because it could be released out of the laboratory and then it would really be how. And other ones the same its being done under under the highest security conditions and were learning a lot from it so we are better prepared so. Given that Mother Nature is the ultimate bioterrorist i think we have to push forward on the research i dont think we have a lot of a lot of options a small group of scientists. Socalled community essentially created a weapon of mass destruction and they did so to make a political point that no Public Health resources and attention should be focused on this particular problem. The risk of publishing it wasnt just that some malefactor is going to make this and let it loose you know because he thinks it will bring armageddon but that it will now spread to dozens of laboratories who make it and study it you know the risk is in a small number of years you know this will get out to a larger scientific community. To put it mildly let the rest of humanity down. The bird flu controversy highlights a difficult question facing the worlds population what can we do to stop terrorists individuals or groups from creating and using biological weapons so far the Global Community has not come up with a planned response to this threat the u. S. Government has spent billions of dollars developing vaccines against pathogens such as anthrax but many critics believe that Io Technology is changing so rapidly that these will be rendered useless we dont have a medical corner measure for every possible disease especially with viruses so if a terrorist or one of those kinds of. We have a problem a certain possibility that we were. Existing nothing if a terrorist group were to. Go there theyre resistant to some of the more common and that we start. Create tremendous problems for us. Its not trivially simple to do but its also Rocket Science i think expecting that there could be. Control over all the components and all the materials and all the equipment that could be used to manufacture. I think this is a fantasy i still think thats possible for some effort is being made to put in place global safeguards the manufacturers of synthetic d. N. A. For example in the United States europe and china have established guidelines regulating who would have taken this material but these are not industry wide and they are voluntary another strategy is for scientists to report any erratic behavior by. The f. B. I. Supported by president obama would like. Say more about what goes on in Life Science Laboratories but United States scientists resist this they believe they can police their labs themselves filmed be convinced that the bridge elations in this field i important but the one to be sufficient. People take very seriously the possibility of biological weapon not dark but i see individual scientist has access to biological agents so who can visit people seeing people next. To you is is very important probably the only way to really. To prevent some dangerous taking place ironically the best way to control biological terrorism may have to do with the weapons themselves to somebody if i some cells with a horrible disease and i mean that their death is going to be hideous its going to be prolonged and horrible at least. Its a lot more romantic to go out with it with a glorious bank than it is with with a slow painful whimper and all of our rules and International Conventions are designed by nations for nations but because of the internet that has been a quantum shift or because now were dealing with individuals the concert comment or National Routes you have a computer in a city every home how can you control it all so i think thats really the biggest bunch of control issues in their lives and the chemical and biological field right now. In the end scientific ethics and basic human good will may be the only deterrent to the proliferation of biological terrorism whether by countries groups or individuals. Every year 50000000 tons of electronic waste is thrown away the majority is illegally dumped in developing countries right now electronic waste is the most traded on this with retracing the 10 through the criminal organizations making the big profits and asking why the west is turning a blind eye. On the trail. Hello there jill scott a chance and some heavy downpours across central areas over. The last year where weve had some of those heavy downpours in fact they tend to continue through monday and tuesday all the tools. But were finally seeing a bit of a drying up across these coastal areas over brazil maybe a shower in rio but nothing more than that and slightly better down shes day and remains fine insurance northern argentina across into your guy power warm there of course of the high of 34 innocent still plenty of rain showers working the way through press rico on tools the Dominican Republic and eventually on into haiti as well and also Central America will see some showers that if any widespread and they all become a bit light on she said but the winds are fairly brisk coming in from the east and some showers across into the Leeward Islands even i just said the southeast seeing the heaviest of the rain on monday some severe thunderstorms could certainly be developing late in the day and a very messy picture up into the northeast as well weve got rain maybe since march the mountains and some very strong winds and then look out towards the west google so widespread rain all the way for the Pacific Northwest right there down to is california this rain pushing across in the 4 Corners Region and then work its way further east was on she stay very unsettled out across the west and again more heavy rain across the ohio valley. Talk to al jazeera we want your forswore when you saw that document for the 1st story we listen to after the war saying you would be in to go build you know the stage of you know what we would not be with you we meet with global newsmakers and talk about the stories that matter on the 00. Of struggles full of pleasure but i mean nobody that a person. Probably one of their battle. We knew was only in the moment in an intimate look at life in cuba getting out the door to each other and i carry a gun i feel that you know its exactly right this is my cuba. On aljazeera. I want to see your. Every. This is aljazeera. Hello there im the stasi a tale and this is the news hour live from coming up in the next 60 minutes readying a majesty quarantine spain prepares for thousands more corona virus infections as the death toll there takes another huge jump. Planes going nowhere some of the worlds Biggest Airlines are forced to keep their feet on the ground. The u. S. Treasury says it will launch several